Think of your website as a haunted house; users don’t know where to go next when they come in. So they start moving from one web page to the other. In this case, you, the website owner, must work it out and provide users with the perfect roadmap for next steps. There are two ways to do it, and you could tell them directly where they need to click next to move to the next page that you want them to see. Or you could make it more dynamic and find out the user flow of your website. With the help of user flow, you can pinpoint where the users are usually present on your website. From there, you can input special offers, discounts, or products to make them stop and look at them for potential buying opportunities.
Understanding the movement of your users on a website may sound scary, but in truth, it isn’t. On the other hand, if you don’t take care of it, you are missing a considerable payoff. Using a user flow diagram, one can quickly understand where users spend most of their time and how you can take advantage of those halts in the best way possible.
Today with this article’s help, we will study the user flow and its importance in online sales conversion. Apart from this, we will also give you some tips on creating a flow diagram. So let’s begin.
Need for User Flow
Below are why product managers, UX designers, and other product team members employ user flows for several important reasons.
1. Create Product Goals & Plans
Using user flow, you can create a visual illustration of the steps a user will take when they arrive at your website to get things done on your website or an app. With implementing user flow, you can get a visual walkthrough that will help you understand what product you need to put and where it has to be on the user flow.
2. Increase Development Speed and Reduce the Probability of Errors
When a developer has a visual representation of where a user will be going from one web page to the other on your website, it will help developers in creating new pages for your website, and they can see where those new pages have to be inserted in the user flow to make the whole experience much better. Apart from this, developers will be able to create code according to the requirements of the product team. As a result, there will be less chance for developers to have issues in their code that will result in the rework or delay of the work.
3. User Flow Allows User-centered Design
One of the best things about learning about the user flow of your website and the application is that it enables developers and designers to work according to the user’s perspective. When a product team is working on creating a user flow diagram, they get to see whether they are making an interface that inclines with user needs or not. When you are doing all the work upfront, it will lead to the creation of a more intuitive product from your end that will help customers in several ways possible.
The bottom line for user flow is that if you value your time, money, and energy, then you should spend it on creating the user flow for your web-based application or website. The user flow will cut down the headaches you will have to bear and the swear words that result in halting the whole progress. On the other hand, user flow will surely improve the bottom line of your development and make your website more user-friendly and productive.
Example
For example, think of your website as a digital marketing service provider. In this case, your online customers will follow the AIDA purchase stages on your website.
- Awareness: First, the visitor will arrive at your website from a lot of online platforms such as social media, search engines, or even from an email marketing that you are running.
- Interest: The visitor will scroll through the home page or the landing page, depending on where they came from. On these two web pages, you can put a video testimonial about a business that invested $5000 in your services and got the desired results.
- Desire: The visitors who have seen the video will then look for the services page on your website and see which ones incline their interest. You need to create the idea in their mind of how their business will be able to take advantage of your services.
- Action: The visitor will finally select the one or more services that they feel will do good for their business, and then they will send their query from the same web page using your online forum.
Things to Keep in Mind While Making a User Flow Diagram
A user flow diagram is not about guesswork. You need to go through the data you have collected and analyze it. Below are some tips to help you create the first user flow diagram for your website and web application. Make sure to follow them, and you will be good to go.
1. Find Out the Objective of Your User Flow
You won’t be able to give any form of directions to your users when you don’t know where the destination is. Similarly, you first need to clearly understand where you want users to end up before creating the user flow. You can start by hooking your company’s main objective in the user flow. It could be convincing users to buy a product or purchase their service. You can do this by asking your website users to sign up for a newsletter, download a piece of gated content, and more. But this is going to clear things up when we look at the other side, where we are more concerned with finding the real reason a user is coming to the website and where they want to go.
Find the objective of your company and what users require from your website when they visit it, and by combining these two, you come up with the end objective of user flow, meaning where the user needs to reach at the end of their search. You can also take help from customer journey mapping software such as Lucidchart, that will show you how your users enter the website, what they do when they come in, and where they are leaving. This information is quite valuable as it will allow you to properly form a user flow by keeping each step of the user in mind.
2. Find Out How Visitors Find Out About Your Website
If you are trying to increase the number of users on your website or trying to understand the user flow, then you need to dig into the data and break down the percentage for each of the methods taken by users to arrive on your website. You need to understand what different entry points tell about your users and how to use this information to improve your users’ experience. You can always use these entry points to start your flow diagram.
3. Look For What Information Your User is More Inclined to Search For
Now that you have the starting and end points of your user flow. The next step is to find out what information the user is looking for when they arrive at your website from the entry point. To convert users from customers, you need to find out what actions they should be taking and where on the website.
As a website developer, you should be able to come up with the correct information in the user flow of your website when the user wants it most. Ask yourself questions when creating a user flow diagram for your website, such as “What actions should I be taking that will help me reach the main offering of this website?” “What does the testimonial video make me feel?” and more such questions will target your thinking in the same direction.
You need to focus on customer requirements on each page of your website. You also need to understand what your web page makes them feel when they arrive at it.
4. Start Mapping Out the User Flow
Now you know where the audience is coming from, what they are doing, and what they want from your website. The final piece of the puzzle is to put all of these in one place and create your user flow map. Look for the opportunities users want to know about and place them strategically. You can start with the different shapes that will indicate entry points. After that, determine how your landing page will look and where designers have to put the CTA to make it most compelling.
Keep in mind your user flow is likely going to change with time, and it will further grow with the increase in the number of the audience along with the change in user motivation as well. So it’s a constant process that you need to take care of once or twice a year.
How to Take Advantage of User Flow?
There are so many deliverables when we look at the work of a UX designer. But in all of it, user flow is one of the essential concepts that both the UX designer and the website developer need to focus on. Now you might be asking why is it so? Well, we have got you covered with this section that explains multiple benefits you get to have when you are taking the help of user flow in creating your website.
User flows are the fastest way by which one can create a visualization of the process. You could create them directly in your design tool if you want. You don’t need to use a separate application to complete the work.
While creating prototypes, what we are doing is imitating the final solution on which we are working. The user flow, on the other hand, shows us all forms of possibilities that we could achieve from our project in just one picture.
If you are doing mockups of your project, then it is not the best way to showcase what the final product is going to look like. The application is more than just a bunch of screens or web pages. The whole workings of a website or a web application lies underneath the interactions that take place. The user is looking at your website as a one-stop solution; with user flow, you get to define the solution in a more detailed way possible.
If you share a prototype with a group or a team, you are unsure whether they have looked at all the different pathways users can take when they enter the website or the application. With user flow, one can see all the paths the user could take in a single picture.
With the help of user flow, you create all the different forms of processes even before creating the first mockup for the project. Some of the user flow kits allow designers to use built-in templates to visualize UI before they can work on their own separately.
Mockups, prototypes, and other forms of demos are hard to understand if you are someone who is not from a technical background. But that is not the case with user flow. User flow almost works like magic regarding explaining different forms of relations in the designed solutions. User flow with the added advantage of mockups, is enough for anyone to understand the workings of your website and how the user moves from one place to the inside of your website.
Conclusion
So this is what user flow is all about. User flow makes it possible for you to understand the mindset of a user and their requirements as well without getting them in trouble of writing down the same information in a forum. User flow is a must for websites selling products or services, as it can quickly increase your user conversion and retention in the best way possible. We hope this article has helped you understand the concept of user flow. If there is anything more you want to learn about user flow, put it down in the comment section and let us know.
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Simran works as a technical writer. The graduate in MS Computer Science from the well known CS hub, aka Silicon Valley, is also an editor of the website. She enjoys writing about any tech topic, including programming, algorithms, cloud, data science, and AI. Traveling, sketching, and gardening are the hobbies that interest her.
